Feature

By Christopher VerPlanck

Even people who have never been to San Francisco have heard of Russian Hill. The name alone conjures up images of fog engulfing steep hillsides and hoary, old, vine-covered artists' cottages. Russian Hill is that, but it is also much more. Architecturally it is one of the most heterogeneous neighborhoods in San Francisco. Although Russian Hill is home to some of the oldest pre-quake cottages in the city, it is also home to dense rows of post-quake Edwardian flats, elaborate Moorish Revival movie palaces and towering modern apartment buildings. Russian Hill is also distinguished by its rich artistic, literary and intellectual traditions, home to such varied individuals as Swedenborgian minister Joseph Worcester, architect Willis Polk, writer Gelett Burgess, photographer Dorothea Lange, and painter and poet Maynard Dixon. All of these individuals, plus countless numbers of less prominent working-class people of many different backgrounds, have made their home on Russian Hill throughout the past century and a half.

Russian Hill with Jobson's tower in the background, 1885

According to the San Francisco Planning Department, Russian Hill is a roughly rectangular district comprised of more than fifty blocks in an area bounded by Van Ness Avenue to the west, Pacific Avenue to the south, Bay Street to the north and Mason Street to the east. The dominant physical feature of the neighborhood is Russian Hill itself, with a summit that rises to 360 feet at the intersection of Vallejo and Florence Streets. Russian Hill streets can be steep, especially the blocks east of Jones Street and north of Green Street. Indeed, the neighborhood boasts three of the steepest blocks in the city: Filbert, between Leavenworth and Hyde; Jones, between Union and Filbert; and Jones between Green and Union. Several other blocks on Russian Hill were entirely too steep to be graded for vehicular traffic. Stairs still remain today that climb the right-of-ways along Vallejo and Green Streets, between Taylor and Jones, and also Greenwich, between Hyde and Larkin. Like nearby Telegraph Hill, these stair streets have become lush jungle-like gaps in the city due to the dedicated gardening efforts of many of the neighbors. The combined effects of dead-end streets, street stairs and the traffic diverting Broadway Tunnel have contributed to the quiet and occasionally quasi-rural atmosphere of Russian Hill.

According to reasonably well-founded lore, the derivation of the name for Russian Hill is rooted in the existence of a small graveyard at the top of the hill, presumably placed there by visiting Russian sailors from Fort Ross who had lost their comrades during visits to the tiny Mexican settlement of Yerba Buena during the 1830s and 1840s. An American named Bayard Taylor noted the graveyard in 1849. He described the graves as being “…each surmounted with a black cross, bearing an inscription in their language.” The name Russian Hill was initially applied to the entire ridge rearing up to the west of Yerba Buena Cove. Eventually Nob Hill got its own name and, henceforth, the name Russian Hill referred to the summit located north of Pacific Avenue.

Throughout the first two decades of American rule, Russian Hill remained relatively sparsely populated due to its steep grades; horse-drawn buggies and wagons could only approach the summit from the west. Nevertheless, like Telegraph and Rincon Hills, Russian Hill had excellent views and attracted weekend day trippers who scaled the formidable heights for picnics and panoramic views of downtown, San Francisco Bay and Marin County.

The first section of Russian Hill to be settled was the Summit, a compact two-block enclave bounded by Jones Street to the west, Green Street to the north, Taylor Street to the east and Broadway to the south. One of the most significant districts in San Francisco, the Summit was described in 1983 by renowned architectural historian Richard Longstreth as a: "...verdant enclave [separated] from the street. The total effect imparts a sense of both ordered elegance and elements that had been accumulated over time…In little more than a decade, Russian Hill had become a veritable wilderness rising amid San Francisco's dense urban fabric. Reached by long flights of steps and narrow paths, with plants growing over everything in sight, the compound conveyed a sense of age, even slight decay. Its cultivated rusticity, laced with urbane counterpoints, suggested an old, remote, somewhat neglected residential quarter on the fringe of a European city rather than a pastoral retreat."

The earliest recorded property transaction for the Summit occurred during the Gold Rush when William Squire Clark purchased the entire block bounded by Vallejo, Taylor, Broadway and Jones Streets for $225. Five years later, building contractor Charles Homer purchased the same block for $5,000 and built a house on the northeast corner of Broadway and Taylor Streets. In September 1853, Homer sold the 50-vara lot (Spanish for a unit of length—about a yard) on the northeast corner of Broadway and Florence Streets to a contractor named Joseph H. Atkinson for $4,000. A month later, Homer sold a second 50-vara lot on the southeast corner of Vallejo and Taylor to architect William Ranlett for $4000. A year later Homer sold yet another 50-vara lot on the southeast corner of Vallejo and Florence Street to a third contractor named David M. Morrison. All four men were successful participants in the development of San Francisco during the early American period, and three of them formed a short-lived, design-build company called Homer, Ranlett and Morrison.

The Summit of Russian Hill contains approximately two-dozen dwellings that are some of the oldest and most significant in San Francisco. At least three were designed and built by the partnership of Homer, Ranlett and Morrison. A brief word about Ranlett is appropriate. William Ranlett, born in Augusta, Maine, in 1806, was one of the most influential American architects to practice during the middle of the nineteenth century. Heavily influenced by the work of tastemaker Andrew Jackson Downing and his architect partner Alexander Jackson Davis, the New York-based Ranlett worked hard to promulgate the newly popularized Italianate and Gothic Revival styles in an era still dominated by the old-fashioned Greek Revival style. Ranlett's most famous surviving work is The Hermitage in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey. Most important for posterity was Ranlett’s widely disseminated journal, The Architect. Contained within the pages of this widely distributed promotional periodical were dozens of architectural patterns of picturesque rural villas. After meeting with a degree of success in New York, William Ranlett decided to move West during the Gold Rush to try his fortunes in the fast-growing yet still frontier-like settlement of San Francisco.

1032 Broadway

In 1853, Ranlett designed Joseph Atkinson's house at 1032 Broadway. The design of this dwelling, which still exists today, is based very closely on a pattern for an Italianate Villa in Ranlett's The Architect. Although it has been stuccoed over and an addition subsequently built, the exterior of the Atkinson-Roos House, as it is known, is still recognizable as Ranlett’s design. Earlier that same year, Ranlett designed Charles Homer's house next door. The style of this house, which no longer stands, resembled The Hermitage in terms of its design and detailing. Ranlett also designed and built a house for himself and his family on Taylor Street. Its complicated footprint and facade, with repeated re-entrant angles, earned it the sobriquet of “The House of Many Corners.” Also designed in the Italianate Style, this dwelling, now with the address of 1637 Taylor, had the misfortune to be cut in half around 1895 by Everard Milton Morgan who apparently gave half the house to his wife as part of a divorce settlement. He then moved the other half elsewhere. What remains today of the House of Seven Corners bears little resemblance to its original appearance, having been remodeled many times.

The third contractor to make his home on Russian Hill, David M. Morrison, built his own home on the south side of Vallejo, between Florence and Taylor. Although part of the partnership of Homer, Ranlett and Morrison, David Morrison seems to have not utilized Ranlett’s expertise in the design of his modest, thirty-foot square cottage. This dwelling still exists, although not recognizable as such, having been absorbed into the Livermore Residence at 40 Florence.

40 Florence

With several major residences already built on the block bounded by Broadway, Taylor, Vallejo and Jones by members of San Francisco's building trade, Homer subdivided the remaining section. This section, which included an old Russian burying ground, became home to several working-class artisans and tradesmen. These individuals, whose families comprised the backbone of Russian Hill, built a row of simple vernacular cottages along the west side of Florence Street and the east side of Jones Street. These were all destroyed during the 1906 Earthquake and Fire.

From the 1850s to the 1880s, the Summit of Russian Hill was inhabited by a number of prominent individuals, several of whom were active members of San Francisco's artists’ colony. With the exception of Joseph Atkinson, the coterie of contractors who had built the first houses on Russian Hill departed during the 1850s as a result of financial difficulties. Notable newcomers who took up residence on Russian Hill during the 1850s included Almarin B. Paul, a merchant, prospector, newspaper editor and longtime friend of Mark Twain. Paul was a boarder with the Atkinson family at 1032 Broadway, and in 1857 he married Kate V. Mullen, Joseph Atkinson's sister-in-law. While prospecting for silver in Nevada's Mother Lode, Paul befriended Twain who was then editing The Territorial Enterprise. In subsequent years, Mark Twain apparently visited Paul and the Atkinsons at 1032 Broadway several times.

From 1848 through the 1880s, the northernmost block of Russian Hill's Summit remained vacant, largely as a result of the sheer bluffs that cut off the block from many of the surrounding streets. The notable exception to this state of affairs was Jobson's Tower, a commercial observatory located on the block bounded by Jones, Green, Taylor and Vallejo Streets. Its builder, David Jobson, was vitally interested in determining what ships were arriving through the Golden Gate (and more important, what cargoes they carried), for their arrival could often dramatically affect the price of commodities. This advance knowledge of what ships were arriving was a substantial advantage for merchants. For many years the Merchants Exchange had maintained a system of semaphores, telegraph stations and observatories at Land's End and Telegraph Hill. Jobson sought to head off the competition by constructing his own 50-foot-high observatory at the Summit of Russian Hill in 1861. When it was not under use for commercial purposes, Jobson allowed residents to scale the tower on Sundays for two bits a piece. A major storm in 1869 weakened the tower, and it was then torn down.

During the 1880s and 1890s, the Summit of Russian Hill became the birthplace of the Bay Region Tradition of architecture, a Western variant of the Eastern Shingle Style. The demolition of Jobson's Tower opened the way for development on the northernmost block of the Summit. In January 1870, David P. Marshall purchased the site of Jobson's Observatory. He left the site vacant for eighteen years until 1888, when his wife, Emilie, asked her pastor, Swedenborgian minister Reverend Joseph Worcester, to design three houses for her husband's property. Worcester, one of the most influential cultural figures in late nineteenth-century San Francisco, was an amateur architect as well as a man of the cloth, and he willingly obliged Mrs. Marshall. In the process, he designed three of the most influential houses ever constructed in the Bay Area. Two of these houses at 1034 and 1036 Vallejo still exist. Although to the average passerby these houses do not appear to be that special, their impact in the 1880s was tremendous. Their simple shingled walls, minimal ornament and straightforward arrangement of openings contrasted violently with the gingerbread excess of Victorian row houses then being built by the dozen by contractors in the Victorian suburbs of the Western Addition and Mission Districts. Generally held to be the earliest surviving examples of the “woodsy” Bay Region Tradition, 1034 and 1036 Vallejo Street have influenced generations of later architects in search of the naturalistic and minimalist aesthetic espoused by Reverend Joseph Worcester.

1034 & 1036 Vallejo

At this point, the story itself of the Reverend Joseph Worcester becomes integral to the history of Russian Hill. He was born in 1836, in Boston, Massachusetts, to a family of Swedenborgian ministers. Worcester did not immediately turn to preaching as an avocation despite, or perhaps in spite of, the encouragement of his father. As a young man he informally studied architecture and drawing and greatly admired the writings of Emerson, Thoreau and the architectural tastemaker John Ruskin. Eventually he fell into line with the family tradition and became ordained as a Swedenborgian minister in 1867. Much to his father’s displeasure, Reverend Worcester left his home town of Waltham, Massachusetts, for San Francisco at the request of a local congregation. Worcester’s first house was a spacious dwelling in Piedmont, which he built himself in 1877. Later the abode of Jack London, Worcester's Piedmont house was very possibly the first rustic Shingle Style dwelling in California. Following the construction of 1034 and 1036 Vallejo, Worcester built his own cottage immediately to the east, at 1030 Vallejo Street, also on Marshall's land. After Worcester moved in, several prominent painters and writers who were close to him began to visit the shingle cottage at 1030 Vallejo, including the portrait painter Mary Curtis Richardson, Worcester's close friend and painter William Keith, naturalist John Muir, aesthete and writer Charles Keeler and architect Willis Polk. Richardson lived in one of Worcester’s cottages at 1038 Vallejo Street (now demolished) until her death in 1931.

Reverend Joseph Worcester was not the only cultural figure of prominence to attract a group of artistic and literary followers. Worcester's neighbor, Kate Atkinson, still lived at 1032 Broadway in the house her father had built in 1853. During the 1890s, a group of aesthetes who called themselves Les Jeunes, began meeting at Atkinson's house for late-night reveries and wine-fueled discussions. The group, which consisted at various times of Willis Polk, Gelett Burgess, Bruce Porter, Florence Lundborg and Porter Garnett, worked together to produce a literary journal called The Lark.

Gelett Burgess, the primary contributor to The Lark, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1866. Burgess worked as a topographer and surveyor for the Southern Pacific Railroad in California before moving to San Francisco in 1888. Tiring of his job, Burgess found a job teaching cartography and civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. During his free time, he established the Harrison Street Boys Club for working-class boys in South of Market. After moving to a ramshackle cottage at 1031 Vallejo in 1894, Burgess with his friend Bruce Porter began publishing The Lark. The journal appears to have been inspired in part by European journals of fin-de-siecle Vienna, with artwork reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley and the Austrian Secessionists. Burgess, known for his mischievous poems and drawings, is best known to this day for the following illustrated verse:

I never saw a purple cow. I never hope to see one. But I can tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one.

Although The Lark only ran for two years (folding in April 1897), the undertaking won Burgess a modicum of national notoriety.

Willis Jefferson Polk

Another prominent member of the Russian Hill set, as well as one of the most important figures in the area’s physical development, was an architect named Willis Jefferson Polk. Willis Polk was born in 1867 in Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Missouri. Young Willis Polk soon demonstrated an aptitude for design and building, first apprenticing at the age of eight with a St. Louis contractor. By the time he reached his teens, Willis Polk began working with his father, Willis W. Polk, a contractor in the firm of W. W. Polk & Son in Kansas City. The younger Polk's skills as a designer could not be overlooked for long and in 1887, not yet the age of 20, Polk signed on as a draftsman in the Kansas City offices of Howe & Van Brunt, formerly of Boston. Van Brunt had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and was well versed in its practices. Van Brunt taught Polk much of what he would later use so successfully in California. Polk, however, did not remain long in Kansas City. During the late 1880s Polk moved throughout the country, working for several prominent firms before moving to Washington, D.C. to work for A. Page Brown. Brown, a former employee of the firm McKim, Mead and White, quickly moved up within the ranks of American architects. After the widow of the “Big Four” railroad magnate Charles Crocker summoned Brown to California to design a tomb for her late husband, Polk packed his bags and moved with his ubermeister to San Francisco.

After arriving in San Francisco, the mercurial Willis Polk quickly tired of working for others, Brown included, and set out to start his own firm in 1890 at the age of 23. After a lackluster first year, Polk decided to make a name for himself in San Francisco by starting an architectural periodical, entitled Architectural News. Although the periodical folded after the third issue, its steady fare of often-acerbic criticism of the Establishment architects in San Francisco and their Victorian confections won him a considerable amount of praise and notoriety, especially from the city’s bohemian set. After meeting local business magnate and Russian Hill property owner Horatio P. Livermore, Willis Polk moved to leased quarters in Livermore's vacant residence at 1023 Vallejo Street (now 40 Florence Street) in 1891. Polk quickly set to work remodeling the interior of the already much altered house originally built in 1854 by contractor David Morrison. Polk's remodel of the first floor soon attracted the attention of San Francisco’s high society for its grace and avoidance of cheap Victorian frippery. Polk soon began to attract a social circle to events at 1023 Vallejo, including other rising architects such as Ernest Coxhead and John Galen Howard.

In 1892, Polk's family joined him in San Francisco. Willis Jr., his father Willis W. Polk and Willis Jr.'s brother Dan reconstituted the design-build firm they had operated in Kansas City. One of the most notable commissions executed by Polk & Polk in San Francisco, and a landmark on the Summit of Russian Hill to this day, is the Polk-Williams House at 1013-19 Vallejo Street. The large shingled house was built as a duplex, with the eastern 20 feet of frontage on Vallejo Street belonging to the Polks and the western 40 feet belonging to Dora Williams. With its steeply pitched gable roofs, shingled exteriors and small casement windows, the almost mediaeval effects of Polk's residential masterpiece recalled the cottages designed by the Reverend Joseph Worcester three years earlier at 1034-36 Vallejo Street. The Polk-Williams house was ingeniously placed on the steep rocky site to take advantage of both the sun and the dramatic views of downtown San Francisco. While the Vallejo Street elevation was only two stories in height, the steep grade to the rear meant that the back of the house was nearly six stories in height, with a profusion of balconies taking advantage of the dramatic site. When the house was completed in 1893, Willis Polk had a plaque made for the front door with an inscription that read: “Was Kummerts Den Mond das de Hunde Bellen,” which translated from German means, “What does the moon care that the hound howls below?”

The exploits of Willis Jefferson Polk are too considerable to inventory here, but suffice it to say that this man had more to do with the existing appearance of the Summit of Russian Hill than any other. Polk was particularly interested in the tenets of the City Beautiful movement. Although his ultimate influence on the design of civic projects in San Francisco as a whole was probably not as extensive as he would have wished, Polk was able to realize several improvements on Russian Hill that helped to give the district its unique character. The most important of these are the Vallejo Street Improvements, a series of classically detailed retaining walls, balustrades and stairways designed to accommodate the steep grades of Vallejo Street between Jones and Taylor Streets. Made of unpainted concrete and erected in 1914, these improvements, albeit now graffiti-scarred, still exist close to their original condition. Horatio P. Livermore, sometimes called “the Father of Russian Hill.” was a resident at 1023 Vallejo (now 40 Florence) and paid for these improvements, although they were built on public streets.

Horatio, or “H. P.” Livermore, was the head of one of San Francisco's most influential families during the latter years of the nineteenth and throughout much of the twentieth century. In the 1890s he bought much of the Summit of Russian Hill, including the difficult-to-develop parcels between Florence and Jones Streets. Street grading had created a miniature bluff between the more-or-less level building sites and Jones Street below, requiring major engineering feats in order to construct buildings that could face both streets. In 1912, H.P. Livermore hired architect Charles F. Whittlesey to design and construct a row of five Pueblo/Mission Revival townhouses on Jones Street between Vallejo and Broadway Streets (1740-68 Jones). Three years later, H.P.'s son Norman retained Willis Polk to design a more successful row of Mission/Spanish Colonial Revival row houses on Jones, between Vallejo and Green Streets. These properties also back onto Russian Hill Place, and are variously known as 1-7 Russian Hill Place or 1600-30 Jones.

Willis Polk was not the only prominent architect to get architectural commissions for projects on Russian Hill. Only a year prior to the 1906 Earthquake, two wealthy men, Livingston Jenks and Robert G. Hanford, began constructing large residences on what had long been considered unbuildable lots on the northwest and southwest corners of Vallejo and Taylor, respectively. Attorney Livingston Jenks hired Los Angeles architect Myron Hunt to design his large Tyrolean house on the northwest corner, and a few months later mining promoter Robert Hanford built a towering Jacobean/Elizabethan Revival residence at 1001 Vallejo. The later dwelling was undergoing the final touches when San Francisco was hit by the single largest disaster to afflict any city in the United States.

The 1906 Earthquake and Fire, unquestionably a pivotal event in the history of San Francisco, destroyed the vast majority of Victorian San Francisco. Only a few enclaves were spared destruction within the northeastern corner of the city—Jackson Square, the crest of Telegraph Hill, a few blocks along the Waterfront and the Summit of Russian Hill. On Russian Hill, most of the block bounded by Broadway, Jones, Green and Taylor was saved, as well as the south side of Green Street between Jones and Leavenworth Streets. According to local lore, the Summit of Russian Hill was spared destruction as a result of the efforts of Edward A. Dakin who resided at 1652-56 Taylor Street, known as “The House of the Flag.” According to the story, Mr. Dakin, a publisher by profession, lowered the flag in front of his house in salute immediately prior to abandoning his house to the flames racing up the eastern slope of Russian Hill. Impressed by the valiancy of this gesture, a group of soldiers fighting fires apparently raced up the hill to battle the flames with water stored on site as well as with sand taken from the construction site of the Hanford House. Photographs taken in the days following the conflagration bring into stark relief the fortune of the residents of the Summit of Russian Hill.

1067 Green

Before discussing the post-1906 reconstruction of Russian Hill, mention must be made of the “Paris Block,” the southern side of the 1000 block of Green Street that survived the 1906 Earthquake. The Paris Block (so-called because of the existence of a prominent Parisian-styled apartment building at 1050 Green) was the only other major section of Russian Hill aside from the Summit to be spared. Today it contains several of the oldest standing houses in San Francisco. Of principal importance and interest is the Feusier Octagon House at 1067 Green Street. Built circa 1859 by Hubert Howe Bancroft’s business partner, George L. Kenny, and based on the then-popular designs of phrenologist and utopian writer Orson Fowler, the Feusier Octagon House is one of two surviving octagonal houses in San Francisco. Other important buildings in the Paris Block include the George Philips Flats at 1039-43 Green (designed in 1885 by Samuel and Joseph C. Newsom), the O'Brien House at 1045 Green, the David Atkins House at 1055 Green Street (redesigned by architect Julia Morgan in 1915) and Engine House No. 31 (designed by city Architect, Newton J. Tharp in 1908).

Enginehouse 31

Following the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, the bohemian traditions of the 1890s continued on into the twentieth century, at least on the Summit. The surrounding streets, particularly toward the south and west to Van Ness were quickly reconstructed with dense rows of wood-frame flats and apartment buildings designed in a variety of styles. With the exception of a few diehard bohemians at the Summit, Russian Hill had long ceased to be a desirable residential neighborhood for the city’s elite. Following its rapid reconstruction, the surrounding blocks filled up with working-class residents of various ethnic and religious groups and diverse trade affiliations. The higher elevations remained somewhat more desirable, resulting in the construction of more elaborate and expensive apartment buildings closer to the Summit such as the elaborate Tudor Revival complex at 1117-33 Green built in 1909. The majority of the apartment buildings and flats built on Russian Hill did not fit into this category. More typical is a three-story, fourteen-unit Classical Revival apartment building located at 1650 Jones Street. Designed and built in 1907 by architect T. Patterson Ross, 1650 Jones is a typical, if larger than average, example of the relatively inexpensive post-quake construction.

1135 -39 Green

As in nearby North Beach, Russian Hill was almost entirely reconstructed within five years of the disaster. Most of the buildings that one sees standing today in the neighborhood date from the immediate post-quake reconstruction. Construction after 1906, however, did not just consist of apartment buildings or flats. One of the most interesting examples of post-quake reconstruction on Russian Hill is a row of three Tudor Revival cottages perched high atop a concrete retaining wall at 1135-39 Green Street. Designed by architect Maxwell G. Bugbee and constructed in 1909, these cottages, which are all located on a single lot, are unusual in their perpendicular orientation to the street. They replaced a similar cluster of cottages that were destroyed in 1906.

The 1913-15 Sanborn Map reveals that most of Russian Hill was solidly reconstructed. Nothing much changed physically or socially in the neighborhood until the late 1920s, when developers began constructing several high-rise concrete apartment buildings in the area. Initially quite controversial with Russian Hill residents—much as the 1960s high rises would be 40 years later—the Spanish Colonial Revival apartment buildings built at 945, 947 and 1101 Green, were greeted with a vitriolic response when they were completed in the late 1920s. The 1920s also witnessed the construction of a booming commercial district on Upper Polk Street. One of the monuments of this era is the Alhambra Theater at 2320-36 Polk Street, designed by architect Timothy Pflueger and completed in 1926.

Between the late 1920s and early 1960s, Russian Hill remained largely unchanged physically. With very few exceptions, the neighborhood had long since been built out. During the Depression and the Second World War, very little new construction occurred. As the post-quake apartment buildings erected in the years immediately following 1906 aged, many owners began to remodel. During the 1930s and 1940s, many buildings were either partially or fully stripped of their original siding and covered in stucco, a much more durable material. Other buildings were more systematically remodeled in the Art Deco or Streamline Moderne styles.

The 1960s witnessed one of the greatest periods of upheaval on Russian Hill as dozens of longtime residents fought a second and much more threatening wave of high-rise development. Although a half-dozen major buildings were constructed, including the twenty-five-story Summit at 999 Green (designed by Anshen & Allen in 1964) and the Royal Towers at 1750 Taylor (designed 1965), a major battle erupted over the proposed construction of a massive project on the block bounded by Larkin, Hyde, Chestnut and Lombard Streets in 1972. The project called for the construction of two separate high-rise apartments, one 25 stories and the other, 31 stories. After a series of protracted battles at the San Francisco Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, the project was ultimately defeated and a limit of 40 feet was enacted for Russian Hill.

From the early 1970s through the early 2000s, Russian Hill has undergone relatively few physical changes. With a limit of 40 feet in place, there is not much incentive to demolish functional residential buildings that are already at this height or taller. This is not to say that historic buildings are never demolished; only a year and a half ago, an Art Deco corner store on the northeast corner of Taylor and Pacific was demolished and replaced by an unattractive yet efficient commercial/condominium complex that maximizes the zoning envelope of the site. Socially, Russian Hill remains a diverse neighborhood with a mixture of ethnic groups and income levels. Over the past three decades, Chinese immigrants have moved from Chinatown on to Russian Hill, and more recently affluent “Yuppies” from the Marina have moved on to the northernmost section of Russian Hill, particularly along Union Street. Meanwhile, unlike many more transient neighborhoods, many old-timers have remained on Russian Hill, particularly at the Summit, where longtime family ownership patterns have ensured the preservation of many historic buildings and landscape features.

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Christopher P. Verplanck is the Architectural Historian with Page and Turnball Architects. He can be reached at 415.362.5154. This series examines the unique nature of San Francisco's architecture and social history. Copyright © 2003 by Christopher P. Verplanck.